How To Quickly & Easily Rust Hot Wheels

Welcome to another Hot Wheels How To, although this one is more of a H…awesome Hot Wheels Hack because we’ve taken the age old trick of creating that rusted dumped car look and simplified the hell out of it.

How To Rust Hot Wheels & Age Diecast Cars EASILY

I’ve shared many methods of rusting Hot Wheels and creating that aged barn find look on your diecast cars – in fact all 4 methods I share are in one epic post (which you can find HERE) but like nearly all methods of creating a rusted aged looking custom, the ways I shared with you involved either some form of weathering powder, serious chemicals, and other such substances designed specifically for the task of creating rust. The point is that although these methods are effective, they are also time consuming and rather messy (if I’m completely honest)

And then a gentleman by the name of Stephan Ragger shared a method on the Facebook Group that required nothing but the typical art materials you find pretty much everywhere and in so doing he showed us how thinking outside the box and getting creative (read: Playing Shits and Giggles) can give rise to some very clever Hot Wheels Hacks.

It is my pleasure to share this hack with you today, courtesy of and with thanks to Stephan of course.

How To Create That Rusted Barn-find Look – in 5 Minutes!

And I now hand the mic over to Stephan.

Hello everybody 🙂

In my last post many of you were intrigued by the rust effect on my custom Hot Wheels creations so I decided to take some pictures to show you how I do it 😉 There are many ways for achieving a rusty car. This one is mine. Not better or worse than others, just my way 😉

Materials Required to Create a Rust Effect:

1) Acrylic paint (the one you use to paint onto paper or canvas), 2) Artist crayons ( I use a knife to scrap off some powder) and two brushes.

Alex here,Hi 😀 … The ‘artist crayon’ that Stephan is referring to needs to be a ‘soft pastel’ type crayon as it will crumble as required (and yes, that my friends is where this little hack works its magic 😉 )

Rusting Your Hot Wheels – Step 1

The first step assumes you have already painted the car in whatever base color you want (in this instance we’ve gone for a matte black finish)

Rusting Your Hot Wheels – Step 2

The Second step is quite simple … I use a brush to add paint where I want to have the rust. Not so complicated, is it? 😉

Rusting Your Hot Wheels – Step 3 & 4

3 & 4) Dip the other brush in the selfmade powder and then apply it to the fresh painted areas on your car

Rusting Your Hot Wheels – Step 5 & 6

Final Tips on Using Soft Pastel To Create That Rusted Effect

I recommend using different types of brown when choosing the crayons. Rust, as I am sure you are aware comes in a variety of colours and shades and so you could achieve a better effect by using a combination of browns or reds (for example). In the end it depends on you and your taste. Hope you like this small tutorial and please excuse any spelling or grammar mistakes 🙂

Thank you so much for sharing what I personally think is a BRILLIANT hack and one that I will definitely be employing in an upcoming build. I will now very proudly share some of the wonderful rusted custom Hot Wheels …Rustoms I should say, that Stephan has created using this wonderful method he so kindly shared with us all.